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Simon's despatch: Rotarua rafting.
After all the excitement of the previous days gales we decided that white water rafting was the best way to let our adrenal glands recover.
It was down the river Kiatuna - Kia being mauri for food and tuna being mauri for fish. Our guide gleefully explained once we'd already started rafting down the river that this was because the mauri thought anyone canoeing down this river would become fish food!
In her infinite wisdom Beth had booked us onto going over "the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the world" all 7 meters of it!
Whilst I was in no way scared about doing it I couldn't quite shake the thought that my house is probably less than 7 meters tall... "Don't worry though" the guide said "I'm one of the best, only tip over quarter of the time" - Great!
We were in a raft with another Welsh couple and thanks to the girls volunteering arms becoming mysteriously leaden, us boys were put at the front. We were told "it's very simple! When I say forward - row forward, when I say backwards - row backwards and when I say get in - take your foot out of the strap, get down in the boat and hold on tight... Very TIGHT!".
The "little" waterfalls (see less than 4 meters) were good fun, we paddled into the backwash of some and 'surfed' across them. Being in the front was quite a wet experience but fun none-the-less. Then came tutea falls - all seven meters!
There wasn't as much of a sensation of falling as I'd imagined but there was a hell of a lot of water! Now I don't want to caste any dispersions about the lovely ladies sat behind us boys on the raft, but something drove it deep under the water! I've got the photos to prove it ;)
After an almost total raft submersion we eventually re-emerged on the surface right side up to much celebration! This was only half way down so the guide suggested the ladies might like some time up front and we swapped.
I think there might have been a small evil streak in our guide as we then spent a lot of time paddling furiously back into waterfalls to try to submerge the front under the waterfall. This was very successful almost tipping up the whole raft in the process. Great fun!
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